But in this cosmopolitan orgie of political excitement the true-born American plays but a small part. He has put the drama on the stage, and is content to watch the result. If a leader be needed in a time of stress, the man of Anglo-Saxon blood will be ready to serve the country, which belongs more intimately to him than to those who sing its praises with a noisy clatter. Meanwhile he lets the politicians do their worst, and watches the game with a careless indifference. Even if he loves his country, his love does not persuade him to self-sacrifice. You may measure his patriotism by the fact that, if he does venture upon a political career, his friends know not which they should do—praise him or condole with him. "Isn't it good of So-and-so?" we constantly hear; "he has gone into politics." And with the approval is mixed a kindly, if contemptuous, sorrow. The truth is, that the young American of gentle birth and leisured ease hates to soil his hands with public affairs. His ambition does not drive him, as it drives his English cousin, into Parliament. He prefers to pursue culture in the capitals of Europe, or to urge an automobile at a furious pace across the sands. And the inaction of the real American is America's heaviest misfortune. So long as politics are left to the amateurs of graft, so long will Freedom be a fiction and Patriotism a piece of mere lip-service. Wealth is not wanting; brains are not wanting; energy is not wanting. Nothing is wanting save the inclination to snatch the control of the country from the hands of professional politicians. And until this control be snatched, it is idle to speak of reform. The Constitution of the United States is, we are told, a perfect Constitution. Its perfection is immaterial so long as Tammany on the one hand and the Trusts on the other conspire to keep it of no effect—a mere paper thing in a museum. The one thing needful is for men with clean hands and wise heads to govern their States, to stand for Congress, to enter the Senate, to defend the municipalities against corruption. And when this is done, the Declaration of Independence may safely be forgotten, in the calm assurance that it is better to spend one day in the service of patriotism than to fire off a thousand crackers and to dazzle the air with stars and stripes innumerable.
THE MILLIONAIRE.
The millionaire, or the multi-millionaire, if the plainer term be inadequate to express his lofty condition, is the hero of democratic America. He has won the allegiance and captured the imagination of the people. His antics are watched with envy, and described with a faithful realism of which statesmen are thought unworthy. He is hourly exposed to the camera; he marches through life attended by a bodyguard of faithful reporters. The trappings of his magnificent, if vulgar, existence are familiar to all the readers of the Sunday papers. His silver cars and marble palaces are the wonder of a continent. If he condescend to play golf, it is a national event. "The Richest Man on Earth drives from, the Tee" is a legend of enthralling interest, not because the hero knows how to drive, but because he is the richest man on earth. Some time since a thoughtless headline described a poor infant as "The Ten-Million-Dollar Baby," and thus made his wealth a dangerous incubus before he was out of the nursery. Everywhere the same tale is told. The dollar has a power of evoking curiosity which neither valour nor lofty station may boast. Plainly, then, the millionaire is not made of common day. Liquid gold flows in his veins. His eyes are made of precious jewels. It is doubtful whether he can do wrong. If by chance he does, it is almost certain that he cannot be punished. The mere sight and touch of him have a virtue far greater than that which kings of old claimed for themselves. He is at once the en-sample and the test of modern grandeur; and if, like a Roman emperor, he could be deified, his admiring compatriots would send him to the skies, and burn perpetual incense before his tomb.
Though all the millionaires of America are animated by the same desire,—the collection of dollars,—they regard their inestimable privileges with very different eyes. Mr Carnegie, for instance, adopts a sentimental view of money. He falls down in humble worship before the golden calf of his own making. He has pompously formulated a gospel of wealth. He piously believes that the millionaire is the greatest of God's creatures, the eloquent preacher of a new evangel. If we are to believe him, there is a sacred virtue in the ceaseless accumulation of riches. It is the first article in his creed, that the millionaire who stands still is going back, from which it follows that to fall behind in the idle conflict is a cardinal sin. A simple man might think that when a manufacturer had made sufficient for the wants of himself and his family for all time he might, without a criminal intent, relax his efforts. The simple man does not understand the cult. A millionaire, oppressed beneath a mountain of gold, would deem it a dishonour to himself and his colleagues if he lost a chance of adding to the weight and substance of the mountain.
Mr Carnegie, then, is inspired not by the romance but by the sentiment of gold. He cannot speak of the enormous benefits conferred upon the human race by the vast inequalities of wealth and poverty without a tear. "Millionaires," he says, "can only grow amid general prosperity." In other words, if there be not millions in the country the millionaire cannot put his hand upon them. That is obvious enough. His second text cannot be so easily accepted. "Their wealth is not made," he asserts dogmatically, "at the expense of their countrymen." At whose expense then is it made? Does Mr Carnegie vouch for the probity of all his colleagues? Does he cover with the aegis of his gospel the magnates of the Standard Oil Company, and that happy firm which, with no other advantage than a service of cars, levies toll upon the fruit-growers of America? Was the Steel Combine established without inflicting hardships upon less wealthy rivals? An answer to these simple questions should be given before Mr Carnegie's second text be inscribed upon the walls of our churches. It is not enough to say with Mr Carnegie that trusts obey "the law of aggregation." You need not be a Socialist to withhold your approval from these dollar-making machines, until you know that they were not established upon ruin and plunder. Even if the millionaire be the self-denying saint of modern times, it is still possible to pay too high a price for his sanctity and sacrifice.
It is the favourite boast of the sentimental millionaire that he holds his wealth in trust for humanity,—in other words, that he has been chosen by an all-wise Providence to be the universal almsgiver of mankind. The arrogance of this boast is unsurpassable. To be rich is within the compass of any man gifted or cursed with an acquisitive temperament. No one may give to another save in humbleness of spirit. And there is not a millionaire in America who does not think that he is fit to perform a delicate duty which has eluded the wise of all ages. In this matter Mr Carnegie is by far the worst offender. He pretends to take his "mission" very seriously. He does not tell us who confided the trust of philanthropy to him, but he is very sure that he has been singled out for special service. It is his modest pleasure to suggest a comparison with William Pitt. "He lived without ostentation and he died poor." These are the words which Mr Carnegie quotes with the greatest relish. How or where Mr Carnegie lives is his own affair; and even if he die poor, he should remember that he has devoted his life, not to the service of his country, but to the amassing of millions which he cannot spend. It is obvious, therefore, that the noble words which Canning dedicated to the memory of Pitt can have no meaning for him, and he would be wisely guided if he left the names of patriots out of the argument.
Mr Carnegie's choice of an epitaph is easily explained. He is wont to assert, without warrant, that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced." He does not tell us how the rich man shall escape disgrace. Not even the master of millions, great and good as he is reputed to be, knows when his hour comes. There is a foresight which even money cannot buy. Death visits the golden palace of the rich and the hovel of the poor with equal and unexpected foot. The fact that Mr Carnegie is still distributing libraries with both hands seems to suggest that, had he been overtaken during the last twenty years, he would not have realised his ideal. There is but one method by which a rich man may die poor, and that is by disencumbering himself of his wealth the very day that it is acquired. And he who is not prepared for this sacrifice does but waste his breath in celebrating the honour of a pauper's grave.
As there is no merit in living rich, so there is no virtue in dying poor. That a millionaire should desert his money-bags at his death is not a reproach to him if they be honestly filled. He has small chance of emptying them while he is on the earth. But Mr Carnegie has a reason for his aphorism. He aspires to be a philosopher as well as a millionaire, and he has decided that a posthumous bequest is of no value, moral or material. "Men who leave vast sums," says he, "may fairly be thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with them." On such a question as this the authority of Mr Carnegie is not absolute. Let the cobbler stick to his last. The millionaire, no doubt, is more familiar with account-books than with the lessons of history; and the record of a thousand pious benefactors proves the worth of wise legacies. Nor, indeed, need we travel beyond our own generation to find a splendid example of wealth honourably bestowed. The will of Cecil Rhodes remains a tribute to the generosity and to the imagination of a great man, and is enough of itself to brush aside the quibbles of Mr Carnegie.
The sentiment of "doing good" and of controlling great wealth leads rapidly to megalomania, and Mr Carnegie cannot conceal the pride of omniscience. He seems to think that his money-bags give him the right to express a definite opinion upon all things. He has distributed so many books, that perhaps he believes himself master of their contents. Though he has not devoted himself to politics or literature, he is always prepared to advise those who give themselves to these difficult arts. He has discovered that Greek and Latin are of no more practical use than Choctaw—which is perfectly true, if the useless money-bag be our summum bonum. With the indisputable authority of a man who keeps a large balance at his bank, he once dismissed the wars of the Greeks as "petty and insignificant skirmishes between savages." Poor Greeks! They did not pay their bills in dollars or buy their steel at Pittsburg. The chief article in his political creed is that monarchy is a crime. In his opinion, it is a degradation to kiss the King's hand. "The first man who feels as he ought to feel," says Mr Carnegie, "will either smile when the hand is extended at the suggestion that he could so demean himself, and give it a good hearty shake, or knock his Royal Highness down." In the same spirit of sturdy "independence" he urged the United States some years since to tax the products of Canada, because she "owes allegiance to a foreign power founded upon monarchical institutions." "I should use the rod," says the moneybag, "not in anger, but in love; but I should use it." Fortunately, it is not his to use; and his opinions are only memorable, since the country which he insults with his words is insulted also by his gifts. We may make too great a sacrifice in self-esteem, even for the boon of free libraries.